Cloud Step 6: Helping you answer your Compliance Queries in the Cloud

Companies considering using Cloud services should perform a gap analysis between the specific requirements identified in relevant regulations and the set of controls provided by the cloud service provider. Virtually every regulation requires organizations to adequately protect their physical and informational assets. You should be asking yourself these questions:

What information is stored on a system?

Where is the information stored?

Who can access the system?

What they can access?

Is the access appropriate?

All of these questions imply some level of ownership of the assets in question, and that is where cloud compliance issues become apparent.

Using Cloud Computing services for data and applications subject to compliance regulations requires a high degree of transparency on the part of service providers. If you are considering these services, you need to closely review contracts and service-level agreements and understand how the Cloud service meets your specific compliance requirements.

So what can you do? Ensure that the provider you use is able and willing to work with you, to provide and prove any data location restrictions you may have.

Much of compliance is about ensuring proper controls over who has access to assets, what level of access they have and how those levels are maintained.

Netcetera’s hosted Cloud infrastructure provides you with an agile infrastructure delivered from our secure, highly available data centre so you can respond quickly to your needs.

Our Cloud services allow you to focus on your business rather than your IT infrastructure. With our aim to provide our customers with top quality service, we decided to introduce a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to emphasise the importance we place on server uptime.